Super-fast 5G not a threat to NBN: Telstra

The launch of the blisteringly fast 5G mobile network over the next decade will not kill the wires-in-ground $84 billion National Broadband Network, according to Telstra executives.

Telstra is embracing 5G technology after launching a trial hotspot area on the Gold Coast in March and announcing plans to begin offering some 5G services by next year.

Brendon Riley (middle right) at the launch of the Telstra customer insight centre in Perth on Monday.

But the technology has been touted as a potential NBN-killer, even by the outgoing NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow, because of its 20-gigabits-per-second speed.

That's 20 times faster than the current mobile standard 4G and significantly quicker than the best NBN plans offering 100Mbps.

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Speaking at the launch of Telstra's customer insight centre in Perth on Monday night, former chief operating officer Brendon Riley said Australians would still need a fixed wire network as their data consumption increased.

Mr Riley, who now heads Telstra's enterprise division, said substantially more data was consumed on the fixed network than on the mobile network.

"I think 5G will increase the number of wireless-only homes and businesses but I don't think it could replace (the fixed network)," he said.

"Around about one third of fixed capacity of all of the networks in Australia is Netflix.

"That would be very hard to replicate on a mobile network."

Mr Riley said data consumption was set to boom when technologies like 4K television and virtual reality applications become commonplace.

He said some of the earliest adoptees of 5G technology were Australia's miners, who were implementing it in autonomous vehicles.

NBN Co rollout figures reveal almost 6.6 million premises are ready to connect to the NBN, while 3.8 million have connected.